Nearly two decades ago, the poet Christian Wiman was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma. Doctors told Wiman, who was 39 at the time, that he likely had five years to live. In the ensuing 19 years, ...

Books on Christianity too seldom insist readers contemplate Christ's passion as much as they celebrate the resurrection the Gospels claim redeemed it. To witness such suffering and testify to its ...

It’s often difficult to hear poetry, to appreciate the “still, small voice” that spoke to the prophet Elijah, a voice that grows larger in memory or subsequent readings. In a confessional line toward ...

“To say that I was not equipped for this task is comically understated,” Wiman reflects. He was never comfortable with the significant bureaucratic elements of the position. In 2013 he left the ...

In “My Bright Abyss” (2013), his memoir about faith and living with a rare form of blood cancer, the poet and essayist Christian Wiman quotes from William Empson: “Imagine, then, by miracle, with me,/ ...

Imagine a poet is an accordion. The keys make melody, the buttons make harmony, and the bellows squeeze breath into the poem. A poet is not just a singer, then, but a one-man-band with a rhythm ...

In the first chapter of “My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer,” a book Christian Wiman wrote in the wake of a bone marrow transplant to treat his incurable blood cancer, he introduces us ...

Poet and professor of divinity Christian Wiman says that there are all kinds of poems he’s turned to during this pandemic. He especially enjoys poems that are joyful and have helped him perceive the ...

Christian Wiman, who was editor of Poetry magazine at the time, shares this story in his book He Held Radical Light. He had previously been unimpressed with Oliver: Overrated. Poems too “transactional ...